In recent years, websites have become a major distribution channel for businesses. The ability for a business to maintain an online presence through a website, where the business can sell goods and/or services, has changed the nature of commerce. The Internet has greatly increased the ease of reaching customers and distributing products. Accordingly, many businesses maintain websites as an alternative sales and distribution channel to sell products/services (in addition to brick and mortar outlets). Additionally, many businesses maintain only an online presence (i.e. the business only sell products and/or services through a website on the Internet).
With the increase in the popularity of the Internet, whole industries have been created that focus on improving websites as a distribution and sales channel. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a marketing discipline that focuses on optimizing the ranking that a website receives in an Internet search engine. A higher ranking often leads to greater web traffic, and higher conversion (e.g. more sales). Many factors, beyond the ranking of a website in a search engine, often contribute to the traffic flow to a website and conversion of visitors into purchasers of a product. These factors may include the language used in a website, the placement of certain elements in a website, the design of the website, the style of the website, and so forth. Therefore, specific elements of a website may have a significant impact on the success of the website in selling goods and/or services to customers. Typically, website owners identify these elements on their own through trial and error, or hire a third party consulting firm to enhance these website elements. These efforts are typically focused on the website itself, and usually do not incorporate known traffic and/or conversion trends from other websites in the same space as the particular website.